Philippians 3:4b-14 / Matthew 18:21-35

I need to start today by telling you that I’m a coward.  I’m not sure when it happened.  I used to be fairly brave (except around roller coasters).  It happened sometime Thursday after spending three days with today’s gospel lesson from Matthew.

You need to know that Matthew remembers Jesus telling this parable to the chief priests and elders of the people while he taught in the temple.  This was after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem while palm branches waved.  It was after he drove the money changers and sacrifice sellers out of the temple, reclaiming it as a house of prayer.  It was after he cursed a fig tree for not bearing fruit.

It was told to those who questioned his authority.  Even though he said he wouldn’t answer their questions because they wouldn’t answer his about John’s baptism; Jesus first told them a parable about two sons; one who promised to do some work in his father’s field and then didn’t and the other who said he wouldn’t but did.

After telling the chief priests and elders that, ‘the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God a head of you”, Jesus told them another parable.

There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 34When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. 37Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” 39So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. (Mt. 21:33-39 NRSV)

It was when I got to this point in my prayers and study that I wimped out. I think most of us around here don’t know much about the care and feeding of vineyards.  There aren’t many grapes grown around Kennett.  Rice; yes.  Cotton; heck yes!  Some soy beans, a little corn, but no vineyards.

So my brilliant idea was to re-write the parable replacing the vineyard with cotton acreage.  I’ve seen all the work it takes to prepare a productive cotton patch today.  Even those of us who have never chopped it or picked it or stomped it or actually touched a boll know all the hard work required.  Many in our congregation even know what it’s like to be the landlord who leases the field expecting a share of the harvest.  It sounded like a great idea until I read the rest of the story.

Jesus asked them what they thought would happen.  They replied, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

And after talking about the stone that the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone, Jesus told them that,”the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. 44The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

That’s when I joined the chief priests and Pharisee who, when they heard it, “realized that he was speaking about them.”  And I realized that the “you” wasn’t who I originally thought it was.  I’d have to do a re-write that somehow included all grain and lint farmers as well as lawyers and teachers and store owners and day laborers and anybody else who had received a “vineyard” from God and who had not returned the fruits that were expected to the One who expected them.  The parable revealed God’s judgment on everyone who fails to return to God what belongs to God.  It wasn’t too long after that realization that it occurred to me that judgment also applies to those who have been given churches to pastor.

That’s when I decided that re-writing the parable maybe wasn’t such a good idea.    Maybe it would be okay to do what the Christian church has done for thousands of years and assume Jesus and Matthew were talking about somebody else; Jews maybe, or followers of Islam,  or at least those other so-called Christian sects that don’t agree with me (er us).

Unfortunately that’s when God asked me about the inheritance.  Remember?  The leasee’s mentioned it when they were deciding that killing the son of the landowner might be a good thing.  Their hope was that the inheritance would become theirs to keep.  In the parable the inheritance is the vineyard but … if God is the landowner I don’t think that’s the inheritance being offered.  But it does have something to do with grapes.

I believe the inheritance placed in our care by the Lord of all sits right here on this table and every table set with the Body and Blood; the Bread and Wine needed for World Communion Sunday today.  This is our inheritance from God through Jesus Christ.  The power of God’s mercy doesn’t put those wretches to a miserable death.  That was the judgment passed by those afraid of losing the power and prestige of the temple.  Instead God’s judgment sends another and another and me and you after The Cornerstone rejected by the builders.  Our mission is to claim even those who once rejected the Son, as Children of God and show what that might mean to them in this world filled with hate and dis-ease.

Paul writes, “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:8-14, NRSV)

Press on then; and remember when reading scripture the “you” is usually really you.  And The Inheritance is the very presence of God through the body and blood of Jesus Christ that is with us always.  Amen.

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